I'm trying to recreate an existing character in FATE, but she has an aspect that I'm unsure how to handle.
This aspect is something that I want to be able to bring up in play, and I mostly see myself self-compelling it. At the same time I don't want to completely block off the possibility of someone else compelling that aspect, I just want to have more control over it than it seems like the rules for Invoking and Compelling allow at first glance.
If you’re in a situation where having or being around a certain aspect means your character’s life is more dramatic or complicated, someone can compel the aspect. […]
You can negotiate the terms of the complication a bit, until you reach a reasonable consensus.
Whoever is getting compelled then has two options:
- Accept the complication and receive a fate point
- Pay a fate point to prevent the complication from happening
[…]
GMs, you’re the final arbiter here, as always — not just on how the result of a compel plays out, but on whether or not a compel is valid in the first place.
I can envision both of the options, figuratively, leaving a bad taste in my mouth; either feeling pressured into doing something (albeit with an in-game reward) or feel penalised for preventing something from happening by giving a up a fate point. That is unless I can convince the GM it's not valid in the first place.
Given the aspect involved a potentially sensitive topic for myself, I've been advised by someone else that this could be a good place for using an X-Card, from the TTRPG Safety Tools Toolkit (Google Docs link), which is also discussed here in What are the benefits of using the X Card safety tool in comparison to plain communication?.
My issue here is that I don't want to have ultimate power to block the topic, as for me at least, it's not something that I don't want to ever come up, which seems like the remit of the X-Card. At the time same time I'm not sure how to handle the potential for X-Carding personally feeling like an arbitrary move to preserve in game resources. Likewise I don't want to make it a line or a veil; something that would never come up or get skipped over.
I've briefly read ALTERNATE RULES: Revisiting Fate Compel Refusal by Fate Core authors Ryan Macklin and Leonard Balsera. :
To be totally honest, the mechanics around refusing compels is meh—by design. The Fate compel directives push for a yes-and or yes-but play ethos, where the GM can propose an interesting complication for players to have fun with. But to keep people from being strongarmed into situations they don’t want to be in, we have the refusal mechanic.
The drafted rule reads:
Buying out of a compel should create story, just as accepting and negotiation does. Refusing a compel could mean your character shows fortitude in the face of temptation, struggles with a dramatic choice, etc.
When you buy out of a compel with a Fate point, the act of spending that Fate point does one of two things: it either creates a situational aspect relating to the refusal (which has a free invoke), or it puts a free invoke on an existing aspect. That aspect naturally relates to a relevant story element. That way, you still get a die roll benefit from the fate point expenditure; you’re just pushed into a situation where you had to spend your fate point now rather than later.
But my character isn't "Refusing a compel could mean your character shows fortitude in the face of temptation, struggles with a dramatic choice" the issue I'm facing is "not having a perceived "fair" way to navigate the aspect being brought up in a way the querent doesn't want to follow through with" (as per Doppelgreener's comment).
As an example of play I am concerned about, I'm going to take inspiration from a game I played with the same character in a different system:
Fin grabs hold of the window ledge, scrambling and heaving to get her center of mass high enough to tumble over and into the room.
Here, if it were a game of FATE I'd have wanted to self-compel and get a FATE point by making the characters life harder (I haven't named the Aspect, partly to not get bogged down in the details, and partly due to its nature):
Can I self-compel one of Fin's aspects <name of aspect>, that makes it harder for Fin to physically fit through the window without help?
I made a choice, and want to use the compel to explain/justify why that might be complicated for the character.
But there will be times where I might not have wanted to accept someone else compelling that same aspect. Here are two situations, and I'd like to know how to handle them if they came up (for the record, neither up in game, but they could have):
What if Fin landing so heavily on the bean bag bursts it, and makes extra noise alerting the monster? Can I compel the same aspect and get more fate points for Fin's player?
I might be comfortable with that, and accept the compel! I decided to have the character land on a bean bag. Or I might feel like I could spend a fate point and refuse, by saying Fin is acrobatic enough to land without the bean bag.
However let's look at something that feels less fair:
Can I compel it as well? Fin is the fattest character here, so the monster should target her first.
I would definitely have not been comfortable with that. I might have wanted to X-Card it even, but also I don't want to signal that I never want something similar suggested.
As the aspect as a whole might be a grey area I'm not sure how I feel about ever X-Carding the result, especially if it's the GM compelling the aspect, or putting off players from trying to compel it. I don't want to give myself a get out of jail free card, especially one I could apply (or be accused of applying) in every scenario I don't like (as opposed to being actually distressing and wanting me to avoid it entirely), when others don't get that either. I don't want complete control over my character's fate.
Going back the alternate rules, I don't know how best to phrase that version of refusing a compel in a way that:
creates a situational aspect relating to the refusal (which has a free invoke), or it puts a free invoke on an existing aspect
What am I refusing here? That the beanbags don't break? What kind of 'free invoke' is "Doesn't break beanbags when landing on them", which wouldn't have existed before?
I could just agree this ahead of time in a session 0, but that doesn't feel much better making it a Line/Veil. The previously linked question also points out the issues with just relying on communication alone.
Is there some way of wording the Aspect, or another rule that makes compelling and safety tools work in the way I want?
Best Answer
You can always "veto an aspect being compelled". You don't need an X-Card, but using safety tools can help.
If I could set myself in the ideal place to handle your scenario, I would be playing with a group who were all willing to use Script Change, a safety tool that generally provides more state information than the X-Card. When I wrote down the Aspect I was worried would be controversial, I'd say as much when introducing the character, and draw the Frame Advance symbol on the index card with the Aspect so other people had a reminder to take it slow when using it against me.
There are two important things here: the ongoing table conversation about Aspects and the proper use of safety tools.
The Rulebook Is Incomplete: Aspects At Table
People can tend to put a lot of emphasis on having Aspects with funny or memorable turns of phrase in them, because that's fun and memorable, but every Aspect stands for a universe behind itself that even the best and pithiest of phrases can only hint at. Every written example of a Fate Aspect is missing this essential component, but that's to be expected, because it only really matters when you're at table trying to use Aspects other people have written and they're capable of reacting to you, something a book can never do. As such, always keep in mind that you're not writing an Aspect for the entertainment of a stranger on a different continent two years later; you're writing an Aspect for use at table. It's there to remind you and everybody else of that entire universe behind itself, but as the author of the Aspect you're not likely to tell everyone else the entire thing up front, and anyway it's hardly fair to expect them to remember it.
One thing that can help is to leave the downside in the universe behind; phrase the aspect in such a way that while it's understood to refer to your character's downside, it doesn't state it openly, making it less available to people who are just scanning the play surface looking for relevant Aspects. Keep in mind that the default assumption of Fate is that (SRD) all characters are competent: "they are the right people for the job, and they get involved in a crisis because they have a good chance of being able to resolve it for the better". Plenty of stories feature people who can acquit themselves well in an action scene teaming up with people who can't to accomplish something neither of them could do alone, so when you write this Aspect, a theme to consider is "why you're there anyway". Maybe you're More Of A Desk Operative but your analysis skills are needed in the field, so you go. Not having regular contact with the underworld can actually be a plus when you're trying to sell a cover identity, too. Or maybe you're a Scarred Veteran of the Secret War and, yes, you can only walk with a cane, but when it comes to the shadow players and their shadow stages, you've got a depth of knowledge few people can match. It can help, but ultimately it's not possible to write in such a way as to guarantee you can't be misunderstood.
This is all to say that, at table, the operational limits of an Aspect are always a topic for conversation, and the handful of Fate Points you start a session with are not your only weapon in this conversation; heck, they're not even your best weapon. When somebody tries to compel your Aspect there are more options possible than you having to take the compel or paying a Fate Point to stop it; it's entirely possible that the compel was wrongly offered in the first place because somebody else's concept of how your Aspect should operate is different from yours.
The conversation about the limits of your Aspect is, necessarily, ongoing, and requires the good faith of everyone involved that it's serious and worthy of time. Because if you pull good faith out of that? Well, the players each have their handful of Fate Points and the GM has unlimited ammo. How's that going to end? So have the conversation. With luck, other people will start to get a sense of the universe behind the phrasing and you won't need to have it as much as time goes on.
A good set of safety tools can help communicate clearly during that conversation, so here's:
Safety Tools: X-Card Considered Harmful
The X-Card doesn't have a lot of affordances to it, and there's a common misuse of it out there -- I attribute it mostly to imperfect teaching -- which goes about like so:
The X-Card is the nuclear option. Whenever something's happening that troubles you, touch the X-Card and we'll blank out the scene and move on, no questions asked.
This isn't how the card's creators envisioned it being used - at a bare minimum they usually talk about the card's use as a two-step process where you tap it to signal caution or take it to take control. Ultimately you have to be willing to blank out the scene and move on no questions asked if that's what the person who took the card is most comfortable with doing, but that's not the only use of the card.
Using the card in this way results in someone who wants to express discomfort losing all agency over how their concerns are handled because they spoke up about them, and that hasn't sat well with a lot of people. When I'm in a larger organized space where the X-Card is institutional, I try to teach it in a more nuanced matter, but as a matter of personal preference I favor Script Change because the vocabulary of video manipulation offers a lot more affordances to talk about how you want play to proceed. Also it meshes well with Fate's usual cinematic angle on things.
But regardless of what tool you use, the purpose of its use is to signal very clearly to everyone involved: this is no longer a conversation that serves a gaming purpose. This is a conversation about the limits of my safety and comfort.
You shouldn't be worried about using a safety tool. You shouldn't be concerned that your use of the safety tool won't be taken seriously when the entire purpose of a safety tool is to signal that you should be taken seriously. There is no secret double-serious mode to unlock. The safety tool is maximum serious.
Maybe you're worried about finding out that the people you game with aren't willing to take you seriously? But as painful as that might be, well, better to find out and move on than wait for disaster. Not gaming is better than bad gaming.
Oh hey, that reminds me of the secret third part to this answer that was always here:
The Move-On Gambit Reversed: The Backfire
I'm not going to say "don't ever put something problematic in an Aspect". One of the best Aspects I ever heard about was in a supers Fate game where one superheroine's Trouble was "Backwards in High Heels", which ultimately called back to a pithy newspaper comic observation about Ginger Rogers that seems so trenchant the popular consciousness has put it in a lot of wrong mouths over the years. All Fate characters are capable of proactive dramatic action, and sometimes that action is against or in spite of a blatant societal double standard about your own accomplishments.
But a problematic Aspect can be kind of a land mine, especially if the thing that makes the Aspect so problematic are its cliched or dismissive expressions in popular media.
This is because the use of Aspects at table is often very improvisational. The GM might prep a scenario with thoughtful use of character Aspects as the driver, but in many cases the use of Aspects isn't so premeditated. The game's guidance on appropriate use of Fate Points to hit Aspects should be viewed through an improvisational lens; you're not looking for reasons to shut it down, you're just making sure someone's doing something people can believe in and keep the improv going.
But the problem with improv is that when you're not being conscious and deliberate about things, you can wind up just hitting the poison frothing at the top of your brain, the cliched and dismissive expressions that popular media put there.
Confronting your own brain poison is ultimately a healthy course of action that makes you into a more considerate person, but it also takes work. Not everybody is going to show up for game night expecting, willing, or even able to put in that work.
All of which is just to say: you can't force anybody to play a game with you. It's legitimate for you to want to explore an Aspect which might turn out dramatic and cool or might be problematic, but it's also legitimate for other people to not want to do that. No matter how you frame the aspect, how the discussions go, or what tools you use, it might just be unworkable for someone else and there's nothing more to be done about it. At least you'll have dealt with it openly.